I'll be posting various over/under picks for the All-Star game, the Rising Stars game, and the skills competitions in different threads with polls in this section here. I'll wait on the big game until the line comes in from Vegas, but will get the other events up here over the next few days. All-Star Saturday night has a different format this season. For more info on that, and the scoring involved there, look here -

I will try to go with a 2-point pick and a bonus and1 single point bonus for each event, with the and1 pick only counting if the 2-point pick is correct, as per usual. The competitor with the most points at the end gets a free pass to the playoff round. Qualifying in this will not be used in conjuntion with other qualifying scores in other rounds to gain bonus points for the playoffs. It will be strictly a standalone qualifying entry with no bonus involved.

Ok. I'm stuck on the couch, barely able to operate the damned remote. I'll be alright, as those of you who have had this flu thing know, but at the moment I feel pretty incapable of explaining how I changed the parameters on this thing. I hope I don't make it seem like this simple game has turned into an Escher print. I apologize if that ends up being the case.

So here it goes - I changed up the rules when I realized that it was likely that there would be nothing to gain for most competitors, since I was only offering an entry to the playoff round, which most already had.

I decided to offer a 3-point bonus applied to the playoff round for the top score. But I also wanted to allow those who might have seen there was nothing to play for, a chance to make picks the rest of the way. I wanted to use results that included Friday's picks, and award 3 points accordingly, but also use standings that excluded Friday, and if new entrants, or anyone else, made it to the top of those standings, I'd award a second 3-point bonus.

According to the second set of standings, 'trane, bjjs, and numbah eleven all tied at 14. So instead of 2 winners, we have 3. At this point I feel like just pulling an Oprah and giving everyone a new car. numbah eleven is in line for the 3-point bonus. bjjs does not have a qualifying score, so I'm offering the original concept of a qualifying entry to the playoffs with no bonus points.

So to recap - in order to make the weekend's precedings meaningful in some small way, I have sorta made them way to convoluted for my own liking. Back to the simplicity of round three, where the randomness of my fevered brain's shortcomings should not be a factor at all.